


Dénouement

by fabricdragon



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Dark, Kidnapping, M/M, Mind Manipulation, Moriarty is Dead, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Torture, Post-Canon, Rape/Non-con Elements, References to Drugs, Revenge, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Torture, Warnings May Change, may be graphic in parts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-23 22:55:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13798068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabricdragon/pseuds/fabricdragon
Summary: Euros never stopped playing with her marionettes, they just think she did, however there is a player in the game she knows nothing about: Sebastian Moran- angry, lost, seeking revenge and unable to get it...until now.WARNING: this fic has hurt people lashing out in nasty ways, and  people who have been manipulated into  suicide and (worse) depression.  While i suspect it will come out better than you might expect form the first chapters, its still dark.





	1. Whispers and Water

Mycroft left Sherringford prison for what he knew was the last time. Sherlock had played violin with Euros again. His mother and father had come; his mother cried quietly the entire way home.

He was the eldest. It had been his responsibility to safeguard them all and he had failed–again. He’d nearly lost Sherlock so many times… He’d chosen the wrong solutions… It was long past time to fulfill his last duty: serving Crown and Country.

_“You keep trying to fix things, Brother dear, but you don’t want to see that you’re actually the problem…”_

He left final directives to his staff–they would find them when he didn’t show up in the morning–and set the cameras to loop along his path; the last thing he needed was some overly attentive security officer spotting him.

He parked his car a distance away and walked quietly in the dark to the bridge. He’d always loved this bridge: the view was pleasant when it wasn’t foggy, and it was terribly mysterious when it was. He leaned on the edge, looking down: the currents were murderous here.

A figure walked out of the fog; he walked like a martial artist, softly but steadily, walking right to him. Mycroft simply waited, looking down at the water.

“Odd place to be in the middle of the night.” The voice was casual, but…” Mycroft looked up slowly and scanned him: _violence, hate, murder… only barely held back by a fear of being caught… oddly, he seemed to be directing the hate at me? Ah well, I’m probably a type._

“Go ahead.” Mycroft turned with disinterest to the water.

“What?”

“The cameras are looped for the next twenty minutes; the patrol won’t be back by here for at least fifteen. Go ahead.”

“The… cameras…” A wary caution crept over the man. “Why?”

“I was planning on throwing myself in and I didn’t want anyone to stop me,” Mycroft said calmly. “If it will make you feel better to stab me or throw me in, by all means. I’m afraid I’m not carrying any money.”

The man slowly walked up and leaned on the bridge next to him. “You were… Why would you do that?”

“Does it matter?”

“It shouldn’t, but I’m a curious sort.”

Mycroft sighed. “Without speaking of things you shouldn’t know? I failed. I failed everyone that matters to me and I just keep causing more problems…”

The man laughed very bitterly, “That sounds like my line.”

“Well, you’re welcome to throw yourself in as well. As I said, the cameras were looped for the past half hour, and you have eighteen minutes left until they come back online.”

“Aren’t you worried you’d be kidnapped?”

“No one knows I’m here, and random…” He turned and looked at the man carefully: he’d gone still, dangerously waiting, like some kind of great cat deciding what he was going to do. Mycroft shook the fancy out of his head. “Why would you want to kidnap me?”

“It hadn’t occurred to me to try, actually, until I found you here all unaccompanied.”

_“There’s peace and rest in the end, Mycroft, but only then–it’s all suffering and failure until then…”_

Mycroft turned and tried to throw himself over the edge, but strong arms grabbed him and pulled him back.

“Let me GO!” Mycroft struggled against the man but, although he was smaller, he was much stronger. _Highly developed upper body strength; once decided, he was implacable…_

The man kept pressure around his neck until Mycroft blacked out…

_I even failed at this…_


	2. Assumptions

Mycroft woke up in the boot of a car, bound very securely and gagged with something that didn’t taste clean at all; he struggled not to retch. They drove for quite some time, although Mycroft suspected they were looping and doubling back. Eventually, the man from the bridge opened the boot and hauled him out.

Mycroft got a better look at the man then: _Sniper, SAS background, not… inherently vicious, but… something driving a hate-filled rage at me. Right now he was confused, but…_

Mycroft was forced to the ground; bound as he was, he couldn’t do much about it, and then he felt an injector. He began retching violently as the world started spinning; the man pulled the gag from his mouth and turned his head so he wouldn’t choke.

_Practiced, very practiced…_

Mycroft went down into a dim consciousness. He would remember being put in a van and being stripped… being put in a bag or something, and then something blessedly cool against his cheek…

Gone.

~

Mycroft’s secretary frowned at the clock. After several false starts, he called security. “Has the driver picked up Mister Holmes, yet? He’s late.”

“His car wasn’t at his house, and no one answered.”

“Give me a moment.” He hesitated before calling his predecessor, but… _Damn it why did this have to happen on his second week?_

“Yes?”

“Mister Holmes car was not at his house, and he has not yet arrived.”

“He probably slept in his office,” Anthea said calmly. “Check the cameras and see if he left last night. If he didn’t, he’s already at work and you just didn’t see him come past you.”

“Oh...” He took a relieved breath and called off the alerts. “Thank you, I was concerned.”

“Always a good policy. Make sure you check the cameras though or he’ll call you on the security breach.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you.”

He checked the cameras and indeed, Mister Holmes had taken his own car in to work yesterday, and there was no record of the car leaving the secure lot. No one thought to check whether the car was actually still there–with the end result that the notes and instructions he’d left were not found until he missed a meeting with the Prime Minister at three.

Then all hell broke loose.

It took them until the next morning to find his car parked not far from the bridge–Lady Smallwood had fifteen people reassigned over that–and it quickly became evident that the cameras showed nothing–until the car ‘appeared’ suddenly at one AM.

All the surveillance cameras from the garage to the bridge had been looped from Mycroft Holmes' office computer.

That day’s post brought an apologetic letter to Mr. and Mrs. Holmes, in which he begged their forgiveness, and a somewhat more businesslike letter to Sherlock Holmes, in which he stated his intention to spare the family a messy clean up or the pain of identifying a body. The currents ran deep, and a body was unlikely to be recovered if a search was not begun immediately.

The Holmes family collapsed in grief and shock–except for one, who, upon being told the news, showed no reaction…

…but giggled quietly to herself the entire night.

_Now I’ll have the family to play with again… all to myself…_


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian tries to find solace in revenge... and memories.

Mycroft felt a boot shoving him in the ribs. “You have no tolerance for sedatives, do you?”

He started to retch again, and the man pulled him up and started giving him ice chips. “Seriously, all you’ve done is puke for the last… for a while.”

“Four hours, since the sedative started wearing off,” Mycroft rasped. “Don’t bother trying to confuse my sense of time–it won’t work unless I’m unconscious.”

“Do you ALWAYS get sick like this?” The man sounded frustrated, and less angry.

“Yes. Red hair.”

The man blinked. “I thought your hair was brown?”

“It’s red–it was redder as a child; I dye it brown.” He hung limply in the man’s grip; nausea took all the fight out of you.

“I guess that’s why you didn’t use drugs to try to kill yourself, then.” He hauled him back away from the plastic mat Mycroft had been on and got out a hose. Mycroft’s ankle chain rattled out almost to its full length.

Mycroft sagged into the wall. “Likely wouldn’t work, and I have no desire to be found covered in puke–or end up alive and brain damaged.”

“Gun? Knife? I heard you like knives…”

“Messy.” He tried to focus on the man. “And where did you hear about me? For that matter, how did you find me?”

“Coincidence, actually...”

“The universe is rarely that lazy–” Mycroft started to protest and then sputtered as the man turned the hose on him. Mycroft thought at first it was happenstance but he kept the hose aimed directly at his face, filling his nose and making it impossible to breathe. Eventually, he stopped and Mycroft collapsed, gasping.

When he could finally breathe again, he growled, “That was uncalled for.”

The man smiled. “But highly enjoyable: you did it to Jim, after all.”

“What?” Mycroft couldn’t get himself up; face down as he was with his hands locked behind him. The man hauled him up and put him back on the plastic mat–now cold and wet.

“I found you by coincidence–or perhaps fate, if you believe in that. You tortured Jim Moriarty, drove him to suicide, and I finally get revenge.”

Mycroft stared up at the man coiling up the hose: _Yes, he had worked for Moriarty._ Beyond that, Mycroft suspected he’d loved the man…

“I’m going to hold you for eight weeks, Mycroft Holmes–just as long as your boys had him. If you’re very, very good… I’ll throw you off that bridge when I’m done.”

…

Sebastian went back upstairs and ate a sandwich. It had been incredibly enjoyable to hit the bastard in the face with the hose and watch him choke–Jim had described them doing that to him when they hosed him off–but now that the rush had worn off, he was going back to the almost unfeeling grey that had been his companion since Jim’s death.

“I was feeling vaguely sorry for the man, can you imagine, Jim? Sorry… for the Iceman.”

Well, as Jim had always said, he was a sniper for a reason: never had to get close to a target for long. The closest he usually got to a victim was only for long enough to stab them; it was Jim who could vanish into a role.

Sebastian went back to work, idly scanning the news–and the taps into the government–wondering why no one had set off alarms over him yet.

He got into the work, maintaining some of the projects and businesses Jim had left to him, directing an assassination mission in Malaysia, idly falling down the rabbit hole of social media. Eventually, he looked up and rubbed his eyes. _It was dark?_

He checked the time and frowned. He looked back at the computer and checked his taps into intelligence networks. _Ah… Yes, they’d noticed finally._

 _He’d left… a suicide note_? Sebastian sat forward and carefully accessed some of the higher-level communications–Jim had left back doors into everything, even if he hadn’t maintained them all–and…

_Yes, they’d finally logged him as missing just after three… and found a suicide note…_

_By five they’d found out the car was missing, and… all the cameras HAD been looped._

Sebastian sat back in amazement. He’d counted on the fog obscuring his face, and the change in cars… but… they honestly had no camera recordings.

_He’d…_

_Actually?_

_Why?_

Sebastian closed everything down and went into his bedroom. There was the photo of Jim–well, a head shot for Richard Brook–smiling and looking as harmless as could be. He opened the safe and got out his photo album. News clippings of Jim, the trial, that photo he’d snuck of the scene at the pool with Jim looking so smug and Sherlock and John looking so stunned.

Life didn’t seem to be going very well for either of them, either, as far as he knew. Sherlock had faked his death–Jim had told him he might–but it seemed like nothing went right after his return.

Of course, Magnussen… Sebastian sighed. “I think I should have shot him, really, Jim… Magnussen was slime.”

His imagination supplied the dry, _“I don’t pay you to THINK, Sebie…”_

Sebastian put the book away and poured himself a scotch. “I got the bastard, boss. I can make him pay, but it won’t bring you back… Why? Why did you do it?”

Jim didn’t answer: he never did…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Red heads often have poor reactions to anesthetics, sedatives, and pain medication.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> TW for non graphic violence

Mycroft lay on the damp cold; it seeped into his bones and left him shivering. His captor didn’t come back. Mycroft finally managed to struggle to his feet and try to explore the room, as far as his ankle chain allowed.

There really was nothing. The hose and some boxes and things were well out of reach, and attempts to use his hands just hurt. The light bulb was out of his reach, even if his hands were free, and there were no windows. He urinated as far from his bed as he could, grimacing as it ran down his leg. He couldn’t see if his urine was dark, but he was fairly certain he was dehydrated–from all the nausea, if nothing else.

Eventually, he went back to the mat and waited.

And waited.

_He’d failed–failed at the one thing he thought he couldn’t fail at._

_“You are so used to causing problems, Mycroft, that you don’t even notice them anymore… You’re drowning in mistakes and failures…”_

Time ticked by, steady as a metronome in his head. By now, they would have had his letters delivered, his instructions found, his car; he idly wondered if they would bother dragging the river.

_“The currents by the bridge are terrifying,” Euros had said one time, apropos of nothing. “People fall in there all the time and are never found… like sinking a ship in the ocean…”_

Eventually, he fell into a nightmare-filled sleep. He woke to his captor– _hungover, angry, hurting_ –stalking over and glaring down at him.

Mycroft pulled himself up to sit as straight as he could. _I will not cower._ He lifted his chin. “I won’t tell you anything.”

The man laughed, “I don’t want anything that you have,” and then he kicked him.

~

Kicking him felt like it had pulled the support out from under a potential avalanche. Sebastian didn’t remember exactly what he did, but when he was done Mycroft was making small noises and curled as far into the wall as he could go, and Sebastian’s hands were split and bleeding at the knuckles. He stood there as the rage bled out of him.

He went back upstairs.

He bandaged his hands and put ice on them, then swallowed some pain medication. At some point, he realized he should eat something. He didn’t feel anything at all. He’d thought getting his hands on Mycroft would… would make him feel better? He didn’t, really, now that the rage had burned out of him.

He made breakfast and checked the news and the intelligence reports. They were still trying to find a body, but no one questioned Mycroft’s suicide: apparently he’d been acting oddly for weeks at least, months perhaps. There was some reference to a prisoner at Sherringford?

They’d taken Jim there, now that he thought about it. Jim had said something about Sherringford. That must be where they did… whatever they did to him the second time.

Sebastian made a note to ask Mycroft about it–find out what the hell they did to Jim there. _I wonder if any of the other people there are worth anything?_ That thought roused Sebastian enough to look at the time and consider.

He got a plastic bowl, scrambled some eggs, and went downstairs.

He stared at the heap lying off the mat. _Hadn’t realized I beat him that hard._ He put the bowl and eggs down and went back up to grab his medical kit.

Mycroft finally noticed that the sharp pulling sensation on his lip was distinct from the pain everywhere else and tried to move away.

“Hold still, I’m stitching your lip.”

There was bright light in his face and a weight pressing uncomfortably on his chest–which, in turn, put pressure on his arms behind his back. It was only after the man moved away that he realized his captor had been holding him down with a knee on his chest while he stitched… his lip? He licked at it experimentally and tasted blood, and felt something like wire or… _Oh. Stitches…_

“I left you a bowl of water and some food.” Sebastian frowned down at him. “Eat it, don’t eat it, whatever.” He left hurriedly; he felt vaguely sick.

Mycroft lay there, but the footsteps didn’t come back. He couldn’t open one eye, but the other… He eventually managed to find the bowl of water, and a paper towel with eggs on it. He finally convinced himself he needed to at least drink something, and tried to…

Crouching down and putting his face down to the bowl, or the towel, with his arms behind his back and his ribs tracing fire… he fell and nearly drowned himself in the bowl. Reflexively, he struggled himself free to breathe…

A moment later, lying with his head in a thin puddle he realized he’d lost a chance to end it all here.

_Incompetent, failure… You deserve to hurt…_

_~_

Sebastian grabbed a bottle of Scotch and a glass. He drank until he stopped feeling ill and felt nothing at all again. He stared blankly at the shadows on the wall until the lights started to dim.

_I should eat something. I suppose I should feed him again._

He ordered in, and ate. _Probably this would be too spicy for him; better to scramble some more eggs. I’ll have to make better arrangements for keeping him._

When he got down there, he found him laying half on the concrete, the bowl tipped over and the eggs mostly shoved around the floor.

An uncomfortable feeling of shame crept over him. _Mycroft looked like some of the prisoners they’d freed in raids…_

He shoved the feelings down and snapped, “Couldn’t even manage to kneel? You that stiff-necked?”

“My ribs hurt and I fell forward,” Mycroft answered, fairly quietly.

Sebastian gritted his teeth. _Soft bureaucratic asshole… Yeah, he probably couldn’t manage with his hands behind his back anyway._ He put down a cup and refilled the bowl, sweeping the old eggs aside and putting down the new eggs.

Mycroft looked in confusion: _I can’t use a cup?_

The man unlocked his hands from behind his back and Mycroft had to strangle a scream. He might have blacked out, since he registered no time passing, but his captor was fastening one of his handcuffs to the ankle chain.

“There,” he snarled and grabbed Mycroft’s chin, forcing his head up and back. “Can you take antibiotics or do they make you puke, too?”

Mycroft tried to focus his one eye on the man. “I can take most antibiotics…?”

He let go of his chin and walked off.

Mycroft shivered. _Just what did he have in mind that he was worried about an infection?_ His arms felt like they’d been beaten–he supposed they had been by his being forced into the floor at least–and his fingers tingled and burned, but he could move them, however painfully, and he supposed tingling meant blood circulation.

He wasn’t hungry anymore but he forced himself to eat, and to drink the water. Eventually, he passed out.

~

Sebastian had fastened his wrist to the ankle chain, like a long tether or a run line. The further Mycroft got from the wall, the more closely he would have to keep his wrist and ankle together–effectively hobbling him if he moved off his mat, but letting him sit up and use his hands to eat.

“Dunno why I didn’t think of it before…” Sebastian sighed as he showered off.

 _“Let me do the thinking, Sebie; you just kill things and be pretty.”_ Jim had said that often enough or some variation on it that he had a few recordings left…

Sebastian smiled wistfully and went over to his computer. He called up the voice recordings of orders over missions and instructions from Jim… Not for the first time he cursed himself for deleting the earliest ones–but Jim had wanted him to: security.

_There, one of the earlier ones he had–before Mycroft got to him._

“Once you finish with setting up the fireworks, I’ll need you to go talk to our former business partner–you don’t have to do it in person–and make sure he gets the full severance package…”

Sebastian lay down on the sofa, listening… remembering setting the bombs and taking that shot… Jim had been impressed with him…

“I’ll be home in a week, so make sure you’re pumped and cleaned up… and don’t forget the groceries! I’m not coming home to delivery and stale bread again!”

Sebastian figured if he didn’t wipe any tears away he wasn’t actually crying. Jim would have laughed his ass off at the idea of Sebastian Moran crying. He fell asleep listening to missions and notes and angry rants about the quality of the food at the hotel…


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> neither of us is that lucky...

Mycroft lay on the mat. Time passed and he drank the rest of the bowl of water. He hurt; everything hurt. He took refuge for a while in his memories and mind: re-reading childhood books and revisiting the rare moments of happiness in his life.

He marveled at how few actually happy moments there had been: Sherlock playing at pirates, his first taste of tiramisu, finally managing to master Tchaikovsky’s third movement or Beethoven’s accompaniments…

Violin Sonata Number Three had half killed him to master, but he did it because Sherlock loved it so… and then Sherlock relapsed….

Even graduating from university had been a hollow event–Uncle Rudy promptly installing him in the office next to his and…

The cold wasn’t bad, but it was just enough to be uncomfortable without reducing the pain. Eventually he dozed again, waking when he rolled over and a flash of pain brought him awake in a panic.

His captor eventually came down. Mycroft had made all sorts of brave promises to himself about what he would do, and how he would act, but when he heard the steps on the stairs… he failed… _again…_ and fled into his mind.

 _“You can’t even taunt him into killing you, can you?”_ the Euros in his mind asked him, cool and amused.

_“No, it… hurts too much.”_

_“ _There’s peace and rest in the end, Mycroft, but only then–it’s all suffering and failure until then…”__

_“I know. You tried to warn me… I didn’t listen.”_

_“Oh… you listened…”_

He came back to reality, his one leg throbbing. He thought at first that his captor had kicked him again, but– _no, it was just twisted under him badly._ There was a bit of wax paper with eggs on it and a new bowl of water. He tried to force himself to eat and drink.

Memories of his family, Sherlock, Euros, all commenting on his weight, came unbidden to mind. He found himself unable to finish the eggs.

_“It’s only a matter of disciplining the mind, Mycroft.” Euros smiled her faint unsettling smile. “You wouldn’t crave sweets… dream of rich deserts… make yourself sick… if you just disciplined yourself…”_

Mycroft moved carefully on the mat, trying to make himself comfortable. He went back into his mind, trying to remember meals he’d enjoyed _…_

The last one he remembered truly enjoying had been… years ago _. How had it been that long?_ He expected to remember embassy dinners, cakes, and pastries _…_ but what came to mind was _a small meal of fish, spring greens, bread and olive oil… calloused fingers and soft lips…_

 _She’d been a beautiful woman, Marisa; he could have been happy with her, perhaps…_ Mycroft was horrified to realize that he was crying–he hadn’t cried over Marisa since her funeral.

“Caring… is not an advantage,” he whispered to himself _._ “It’s just more pain. People die: it’s what they do…”

_~_

Sebastian went down and dropped off more eggs and water. Mycroft was asleep, he guessed. He looked horrible, and would probably look worse soon–puffy–and those bruises were already spectacular.

Sebastian went back upstairs and threw himself into work. It was late–very late–when he admitted to himself that he was avoiding going downstairs.

He walked over to the mirror and stared at himself. “You are Sebastian fucking Moran–Jim Moriarty’s right hand: deal with it!”

He brought up an image of Jim in one of his rages. _“Do I have to handle EVERYTHING?!”_ Sebastian could almost hear him. _“What do I pay all of you for? DEAL with it!”_

Of course, that had usually been for show, more than anything. Once he’d gotten to know the man, he’d found him to be quiet, steady, sarcastic… and prone to forgetting to eat; the lunatic mania was all for the public.

“If people don’t think you’re entirely stable, they tend to pay more attention…” Jim had laughed once, after terrorizing some weapons dealer half to death.

“That… was a live bomb… sir,” Sebastian had finally managed to say–it had taken that long for his heart rate to come back down.

Jim had just shrugged. “I never said I was entirely sane–it’s booorrring; ordinary people are sane–but I knew what I was doing, Sebastian: you just can’t follow it.”

…

Sebastian went downstairs with another couple scrambled eggs–he’d made them with sweet peppers, by reflex: thinking about Jim. Mycroft was lying in a different position–asleep or unconscious again. Sebastian frowned to find half of the eggs still uneaten, and a bit of blood…

_Oh, well, yeah, probably his lip… or he bit his tongue… or something._

He put down the new eggs and swept the old ones over to the corner. _It smelled down here._

He went back upstairs and showered, trying not to think about the basement, or the fact that he couldn’t even recognize Mycroft Holmes…

He checked his schedule–nothing much until late–and took a sleeping pill.

~

Mycroft hesitantly opened his eyes–well, his eye. His captor hadn’t stayed long, just long enough to put down fresh eggs.

Mycroft idly wondered _Why eggs?_ and then decided it was because they were easily available, bland, and soft. He picked up the wax paper–his hands were too dirty to want to touch the food–and found that this time _they had some bits of vegetable in them? Odd…_ He wasn’t likely to live long enough to get vitamin deficiencies. He hesitantly ate some. _Sweet pepper? Hmm… Vitamin C, at least…_ He wondered why, and wondered if the man had just made some for himself and given him the extra? He managed to finish them while he was thinking.

Eight more hours crawled by with the monotony of the metronome in his head that wouldn’t let him NOT keep track of time. His unerring time sense had been useful so many times–now it was torture.

His captor came down and put another batch of eggs and a whole jug of water down near the door on the boxes. He started uncoiling the hose and Mycroft flinched.

“You need to be cleaned off, and the room smells.” His voice was rough, as though he’d just gotten up recently. “Can you stand up?”

“I… have no idea,” Mycroft answered hesitantly.

The man shrugged and hosed him off: he avoided his face, at least. Mycroft hesitantly held out his hands and the man ran water over them, and then gruffly told him to turn and hosed his back and… Mycroft hissed.

He heard the man mutter and then finally say, “Lie down on your stomach.”

Mycroft’s image of himself bravely refusing to do anything his captor said crumbled in the face of reality; he did his best to lie face down–it hurt.

The man put on some medical gloves, from the sound of it. Mycroft tried to brace when the man poked at his back and legs, but it hurt and he whimpered through clenched teeth.

He felt water running over him and then the man walked away and coiled up the hose. “You can get up.”

He brought the eggs and water over and put them down... and walked away without any further comment.

After he ate– _two hours, thirty seven minutes_ –the man came back down.

He put down a tin of some kind. “It’s a salve; Jim used it, and I should burn it before I let you near it, but…” He shrugged. He put down a box of meal bars, and brought the hose over–running very slightly.

“I’m going out of town. If we’re both lucky, you’ll be dead by the time I get home–but I don’t think either of us is very lucky.” He spun on his heel and walked out.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> change of tactics

Chapter 6

 _You, Sebastian, are a coward,_ he admitted to himself as he sat quietly in first class, heading away from London. It wasn’t a happy admission, but Sebastian had never been one to avoid facts. _I am a sniper, and a hunter. Facts just WERE–wind speed, distance, cover. It didn’t matter if you liked the facts: they were still there._

_Fact: Mycroft Holmes had been trying to commit suicide. Fact: I’ve been trying to get at him for years as payback, so… Fact: I took advantage of that to kidnap him._

Sebastian sighed and looked out the window at clouds, and blue, and nothing much. _I thought it would feel better to hurt him; it had–briefly–but… I wanted to take down Mycroft Holmes–the Iceman–the man who tortured Jim and drove him to suicide… A bullet through his head would have been perfection._

What he had instead was a depressed bureaucrat who was going to throw himself off Jim’s bridge.

_Why that bridge? For fuck’s sake why THAT bridge, of all things? I never would have come across him if it was any other bridge–better for both of us if I hadn’t._

He pushed it out of his mind and went back to business. One of the money laundering operations was being stolen from, and he was following Jim’s policy: anyone stupid enough to get caught gets made an example of.

_It was pathetic, really._

They’d done a good bit of housecleaning before he even got there, and they’d gotten the answers he needed out of one of the idiots.

“Do…. Do you want a shot at him, Mister Moriarty?”

He still hated using the name, but, as Jim had said, _names have power._ Everyone knew he wasn’t the same Moriarty–they weren’t certain he was Moriarty and not one of his minions: Jim had played that game after all– but… “What? Sorry, I was thinking,” he said, idly tossing a blade and catching it.

“The fellow we got the information out of? Do you want a shot at him?”

“Oh? He’s still alive?”

“Figured you might want to see to him personally…”

Sebastian got up lazily and followed the man to a warehouse… There was a man– _I guess_ –hanging in chains from the beams. He’d been beaten and someone had gotten to him with a knife.

“Messy,” Sebastian said, flicking imaginary specks off his jacket.

“Some of the boys… well.” The man shrugged. He waved at a steel bar and looked thoughtfully at the knife Sebastian was idly playing with. “Didn’t know if you wanted a piece of him.”

“I’m not that crude,” he mimicked Jim’s drawl. “That’s for thugs. Just shoot him and, oh… leave the body someplace artful, will you?”

“Y-yes sir, Mister Moriarty.”

He went on to deal with other contacts in the area, but… that night as he lay in the hotel– _Jim had always loved this hotel_ –staring at the ceiling…

 _He’d looked worse than Holmes, but… only because they’d used a knife… alright, he looked a lot worse_ … But it still gnawed at him that he’d done that to someone: it was the kind of thing Jim used low-grade thugs to do. Jim had always been so proud of Sebastian’s abilities as a sniper, or a quiet killer. Now he was… _What?_

The next morning he got back on the plane, back to London, and went back to the house… He could hope that Mycroft had died in the meantime, but he doubted it. The house had a faint smell of something off–just faint–probably drifting up from the basement despite everything.

He put off going downstairs long enough to check the news. They’d had a memorial service, apparently: photos of a lost looking Sherlock being guided at the elbow by Watson. _Well, they thought he was dead, and he would have been… and they wouldn’t have found the body…_

Sebastian considered a dozen ways to finish the man off, finally deciding on a knife– _quick and nearly painless, if done right_ –and went downstairs.

~

Mycroft measured time in nightmares, encroaching madness, and meal bars. With nothing to distract him, he went over all his failures, all his faults: _I should have seen that coming; should have come up with better; could have prevented so much._

He felt vaguely feverish, and he hurt, but that was nothing compared to the unrelenting boredom, guilt, and loneliness. He tried to bring up memories of Sherlock to keep him company, but they twisted and blurred into sarcastic barbs and accusations.

Of course, there were quite a few of those to remember.

Mycroft hoped John Watson would look after him: Euros had almost destroyed their friendship, after all. Mycroft frowned to himself in the basement: _twenty seven hours and four minutes since his captor had left._ John… he hadn’t arranged to get him counseling, had he? He would need very careful counseling to undo the damage Euros had done.

_Twenty nine hours and forty six minutes._

_I’d… I’d been angry at him, for hurting Sherlock… when I bothered to pay attention… but… Euros had been at him, possibly for months… He was only ordinary: he would have no defense._

He hoped someone cleaned that up–another thing he’d failed to do.

He relived every minute of a vacation at the beach, when he was young and so self-conscious about his weight. He’d been eighteen years old, and the other boy had been just a few months older, and they’d fumbled around with no clue what they were doing. Mycroft never saw him again, and he’d finally figured out gay sex from furtively slipping into some of the less reputable bookstores.

His first sex with a girl had been equally inept on Mycroft’s part, if not on hers: he’d been a cross between a pity fuck and a fascination with having an inexperienced man. While generally not a great memory, he credited her with at least showing him what to do–if he’d had to repeat the bookstore experience… Mycroft shuddered…

…and realized he’d been shivering for a while. Yes, he was sick: his system already weak from depression, and then the beatings…

 _I was being beaten for what I did to Jim Moriarty. Funny, that: Moriarty had never seemed to mind._ Mycroft reluctantly conceded that Moriarty was a lot braver than he was. Then he’d been fool enough to take him to Euros– _God, how stupid I had been_ –and that almost killed his brother.

_My fault. Always my fault._

Mycroft sat down in his memories of class lectures and listened to professors…

At eighty-six hours and fifty seven minutes after his captor had left, he heard him coming down the stairs again.

His captor wasn’t bringing food… he looked at him: _determination, pity, anger… Oh? He was going to kill me?_

“I can’t do what you did; I’m just going to cut your throat and lose your body.”

Mycroft wasn’t sure what to say to that; he finally decided that “Thank you?” was the best he could manage.

“Your family had a memorial service–the way you arranged it, they wouldn’t have had a body anyway.” His captor drew a knife. “It’s sharp: if you don’t struggle, you won’t suffer.”

Mycroft didn’t move as he walked over. “There’s peace and rest in the end, but only then–it’s all suffering and failure until then…” he repeated it for the small comfort it gave him. He deserved to suffer, after all: this was a mercy he hadn’t expected.

A few moments later, he realized that he was gone.

_~_

Sebastian heard those words–and froze. He backed away slowly, something like dread clawing at him, and turned and ran upstairs.

“I did not hear that,” he said at no one. “I did NOT…”

He looked around desperately as if the answer would… He dove on the phone, the old one, and plugged it in to charge. He opened up the computer and started pulling up those last letters from Jim, the ones that were too painful… the last phone call… the recording from the roof…

Eventually, he found what he was looking for… and more.

~

Mycroft slowly pulled himself up to sit. He was better, but he still hurt and it was hard to breathe.

After a while– _three hours, twenty three minutes_ his mind supplied without his asking, or wanting to know–his captor came back down the stairs.

Mycroft flinched as the man walked over, but he had no hope…

“You said: ‘There’s peace and rest in the end, but only then–it’s all suffering and failure until then’. Why? Where did you hear that?”

“Hear it?” Mycroft couldn’t recall hearing it…

The man pulled out the phone and played the first of his carefully transferred voice clips. Jim’s voice, melancholy and tired: “There’s peace and rest in the end, Sebastian, but only then–it’s all suffering and failure until then…”

Mycroft frowned and raised his head slowly. “What?”

“Jim spiraled down to hell after you pulled him in the second time–he wasn’t well after the first time, but he just blew it off. Whatever you did the second time took him apart…”

“We… I don’t understand?”  Second time?  Mycroft shook his head slowly. “We never… He wasn’t…”

His captor–Sebastian?–played the second clip. “The currents by the bridge are terrifying, don’t you think? People fall in there all the time and are never found… Maybe I should go that way: no one ever able to prove whether I’m dead or not? At least I’d never have to worry about leaving a messy corpse…”

Mycroft’s eyes widened despite the pain: it sounded like his own thoughts. “That’s why… That’s why you were at the bridge?”

“I go there to think, and to talk to Jim.” Sebastian looked at the man–or what was left of him–and just felt… lost. “Why? Why did he kill himself? Why were you? Why are you BOTH saying the same things, years apart? WHY!?”

Mycroft cowered, “I don’t know… I don’t know anymore…”

Sebastian stalked back and forth. The cell smelled: it smelled of pain, and shit, and sweat… he hated it. He stopped and glared down at Mycroft, cowering naked on a mat. He had a ginger beard, was bruised to hell, and even his voice sounded weak: you couldn’t tell who he had been–not now.

“I hate this,” Sebastian snarled. “I hate this, I hate hurting you, I hate being so angry, I hate you, I even hate JIM some days…”

“I’m sorry…” Mycroft swallowed carefully. “I… I cause nothing but problems… I even failed to end it all…”

Sebastian looked at him and thumbed his phone. A clip of Jim’s voice from the old days, before… before whatever happened, played. “Honestly, Sebie, if whatever you’re doing doesn’t work, it’s time to change tactics, don’t you think?” _You could practically hear the eye roll._

Sebastian unlocked Mycroft’s ankle chain and hauled him to his feet. “Jim was the brains–I just did what he told me to and had enough smarts to react in the field. This isn’t working, this isn’t helping anything–I don’t even enjoy it–so congratulations Mycroft: I’m doing what Jim said and changing tactics.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> too much alcohol and awkward conversations.  
> also abstract art: http://www.wassilykandinsky.net/work-644.php

Mycroft’s mind recorded as it always did, but he couldn’t make much sense of it. His hands were cuffed in front of him–loosely, this time–and he was led through a stunningly beautiful home–or, rather, it had been, before it was neglected.

By the time Sebastian had stripped himself down and shoved them both in a shower, Mycroft had finally started processing the living area: _silk plants and paintings covered in a fine dust, rich rugs on the floor and drapes that hadn’t been opened in far too long, a piano…_

The sharp pain of being washed caused him to retreat into his mind, the running water of the shower turning into the waves on the beach of so long ago, and the echoes of the pool.

He came back to himself lying on a bed– _a real bed, not a mat_ –with his hands loosely attached to a corner post. He stared somewhat blankly at that while his mind filled in: _Sebastian had scars–some from combat, which made sense; some not. He’d pulled night clothing out of the drawers in here, and removed his weapons to a gun safe or elsewhere–this was… his room?–and had left._

Mycroft had been deep in his mind, but… _Yes, he’d cleaned and treated a few of my wounds… My hair was washed… I can finally smell something other than… basement._

The sheets were stale and hadn’t been changed in some time, and the table–pulled away from the bed and out of reach–had a thin layer of dust on the far side. The lights were out in the room, but the one in the hallway provided some illumination. Mycroft realized suddenly how much he’d MISSED having lights out to sleep. He tried to stay awake to look around, but the soft bed, the pillow, the lights…

~

Mycroft had been bewildered and passive as Sebastian dragged him up the stairs and through the house: he just blinked at things with one eye–his other eye barely opened–and looked confused. Sebastian was uncomfortably reminded of prisoners they’d pulled out… He shook his head and stayed in the present.

Mycroft had whimpered once when his wounds were being cleaned, and then gone limp–literally: his eyes opened and closed, he blinked, but he didn’t respond. Sebastian tested it by pinching him between the fingers–no response.

_Well, at least he wouldn’t feel it._

Sebastian cleaned out his wounds more thoroughly and replaced the butterfly bandages on one with stitches. He shampooed Mycroft’s hair, then gritted his teeth and cleaned between Mycroft’s legs. He got out more of Jim’s salve and treated everything.

 _Now what to do with him? He for DAMN sure wasn’t going in Jim’s room._ Sebastian put him in his own room and started moving everything out of reach. He took the gun and the knife out of the bed holster and went to sleep on the sofa.

“I hope… I hope I’m doing the right thing. I wish I knew,” Sebastian said as poured himself a scotch; he looked mournfully at the bottle–purchased more for strength than taste. “You would hate this stuff.”

He stared at the painting hanging near the sofa: _Jim had picked it out–said it was a Tiger._ Sebastian didn’t see it, himself, but the boss always had a thing for abstract art.

 _Maybe if I drink enough it will look like a tiger_? Sebastian put away another glass of scotch slowly. _Probably not: it probably wasn’t even a tiger anyway, and Jim was just yanking my chain… or he thought it reminded him of me somehow, and who knew how he thought…?_

_Not me, that’s for sure. Maybe Mycroft… Maybe he could explain why…_

…

_“Sebastian?” Jim was waking him up, shaking him._

_“…Yeah?” he muttered, groggy and half awake._

_“In Hartford, Sherringford, and Hampshire… Hurricanes hardly ever happen.”_

_“Is this a riddle? I’m too tired.”_

_“Get me a glass of water, Tiger, I’m thirsty.”_

_“Get it yourself–”_ Sebastian rolled over and fell off the sofa.

 _Wha?_ He sat up blinking, half asleep… _Oh, I fell asleep on the sofa?_ He staggered back into his bedroom and passed out.

~

Mycroft woke up when a man came into his room–years of counter-kidnapping training and his childhood nightmares bringing him awake instantly.

He was certain that his captor– _Sebastian_ –was coming in to beat him, but… _he staggered? Drunk? The man did drink–regularly–to excess… He’d been hungover…_

Sebastian slid into the bed and was asleep in moments, his breathing sliding easily into a rhythm and a faint snore.

Mycroft tried to will his pulse back to normal. _He… He obviously got up and went back to his bed out of reflex, that’s all._

Sebastian moved a hand over him and buried his nose into Mycroft’s hair; Mycroft hardly dared to breathe. He was certain he would never fall back asleep, but… Sebastian was warm, and he wasn’t hurting him, and the rhythm of breathing…

Sebastian woke up to the smell of Jim’s shampoo and of that salve he used all the time. “I had the worst nightmare…” he muttered into… _Jim’s… No… My hand was on someone’s waist and it wasn’t Jim._ He rolled back fast and was up and on his feet.

Mycroft was trying not to move, trying not to breathe; he was shaking and he couldn’t stop. He finally managed to pull in a gasp of air…

“Oh, hell…” Sebastian realized what must have happened. He looked down at Mycroft: _the man was shaking violently and gasping a bit. How can this be the man who tortured Jim? How?_

“You know, Mycroft, I don’t get it… I really don’t. You torture people without turning a hair–hell, your code name is Antarctica–but you can’t take any of it.”

Mycroft’s eyes widened– _well, one did_ –and the shock felt like a shot to the chest. Sebastian must have seen it.

“Yeah, Jim knew your codes. Lady Smallwood is Love, right?” Sebastian shrugged, “He left taps into most of your computers, you know. Yours wasn’t that hard to get–you were the Iceman, after all–never knew if he came up with it independently or after he got your code names.”

“I… didn’t know he knew,” Mycroft finally managed to say. “And… I didn’t torture people…I had to watch… I didn’t like to, but I had to watch… I was the only one who could read people…”

Sebastian stopped and considered. “Like Sherlock? Yeah, that makes sense, I suppose.”

Mycroft stiffened. “My brother has nothing to do with–”

Sebastian figured he needed the bathroom and unlocked him from the bed. “Bathroom, come on.” He half pulled him up. “Sherlock had everything to do with it–everything–but Jim… I don’t know, I think he loved the bastard… and then after Sherringford he was… he was strange, and he got stranger.”

Mycroft heard what he said and tried to think. _Euros… had… Jim had made videos and recordings for her._ He used the bathroom quietly, making note of ways to kill himself if Sebastian left him alone. Memories of his training played in his mind: _play docile, cooperate as much as you can without compromising intel, and gather all possible information._

When Sebastian pulled him into a small dining room and locked his cuff to the chair, he watched him. _It looked like the man moved and worked by habit, by rote… Depression, probably, which would explain the anger and rage followed by absence and drinking…_

Sebastian found himself staring absently at food in the freezer. He’d bought it for Jim, except Jim had been dead for ages by then.

“Do you eat meat? I never asked.”

“Yes?”

“Jim used to eat porridge; he stopped after you had him the first time.”

“Most… most of the meals in interrogation are bland and soft… for the same reason you fed me eggs,” Mycroft said quietly, watching him. His shoulders tensed and then dropped.

“Yeah, I guess. I didn’t figure you wanted to eat takeout Thai with your lip…” Sebastian took out the sausages and the bread, and started cooking.

“Not beans on toast?” Mycroft tried to smile–it didn’t work well. “The last time I was in company with an SAS guard he made nothing but beans on toast.”

“How did…? Never mind.” Sebastian took a deep breath and let it out, stirring the sausages and putting in the toast. “Jim hated beans on toast.” He cooked quietly for a while. He slathered the bread with jam without thinking and put a plate down in front of Mycroft.

“He liked… blackberry jam?” Mycroft stared down at the plate.

“Yeah…” Sebastian sighed. “You don’t have to eat it; I’ll make you some with butter.”

“I’m… actually quite fond of it,” Mycroft admitted. The first bite was heaven, but the toast scratched at his lip and the inside of his mouth–he ate it anyway.

Sebastian got into the fridge and pulled out the box of medication. “Most of its old, now, but it should still be good enough.” He shook out an antibiotic pill. “Can you take paramecetol?”

Mycroft tried to keep a steady voice. “I can, but it doesn’t do anything. I can take naproxen or ibuprofen…”

“Yeah, if you were bleeding internally you’d be dead by now,” Sebastian said with a shrug. He got out the naproxen and set the timer on his watch. “Here, take these.”

He had little enough need to be subtle about poisoning him: Mycroft took them with the tea and the water. “Twelve hours,” he nodded. “My… my own clock will tell me.”

“Right…” Sebastian blinked at him and then slid the sausages on to both of their plates. “You said… you had known how much time…”

“It’s horrible,” Mycroft muttered. “I always know.” He stared at the sausages for a while; he had no idea how he was going to cut them with one hand.

Sebastian ate and watched. Mycroft was staring down at them… “Problem?”

“Trying to figure out how to cut them.”

“Oh… yeah, with your mouth, I guess just biting pieces off…” Sebastian felt a bit guilty again as he looked at the damage to his face. He leaned over and cut the sausages into small pieces.

Mycroft didn’t know how to admit that it had never once occurred to him to eat sausage the way Sebastian was, just biting pieces off: _Mummy had always wanted them to cut them first._

“You drink too much, you know,” Mycroft found himself blurting out when the man poured himself a drink to go with his breakfast.

“Yeah. I know,” he sighed and cleaned up the breakfast and unlocked Mycroft and took him into a room with a sofa. After a pause, he said, “Stay put.”–the “or else” was clear. Mycroft wanted desperately to run for it.

_Coward._

Sebastian came back and locked his ankle on a long chain to the sofa: _simple but secure, sadly._

“I have work to do.” Sebastian picked up his drink and walked out of the room. “Yell if you need the bathroom or anything.”

Sebastian heard the TV go on, so he’d found the remote somewhere–probably under the sofa. He got involved in trying to detangle a problem–would have been child’s play for Jim, but it was torture for him–and eventually he heard the television go off. After a while, there was a hesitant, “Sebastian?” If he hadn’t been listening for it he would have missed it.

He came out. Mycroft was looking uncomfortable.

“Bathroom?”

Mycroft nodded. He unlocked him and took him to the bathroom, and brought him back. Mycroft seemed to be embarrassed about it.

“Jim told me you didn’t give him any privacy.”

“Policy,” Mycroft said quietly. “He didn’t seem to care, though–I think he embarrassed the guards.”

Sebastian laughed then, for the first time in a long time. “Oh… he would have.” He sat down in the chair across from the sofa. “I… thought it would feel better to hurt you,” he said finally.

“Because of Jim?” Mycroft thought about it. “It didn’t?”

“It felt… good isn’t the word–more like release; like all the anger I had just… poured out.”

“That is about what it felt like, I suppose,” Mycroft said, and then wondered if he was going to hit him again. _No, he’s in an introspective mood._

“Jim had thugs for that shit. He always liked the fact that I worked so clean.” Sebastian went over and poured a drink. After a pause he asked, “Do you drink Scotch?”

“Normally? No, but… the pain relief would be welcome.”

“I’d say I’m sorry, but… honestly, I just wish I’d stabbed you a few times and thrown you over the rail.”

“It… would have been preferable.” Mycroft took as deep a breath as he could, and then started coughing. He clutched the pillow to his chest until it passed. Sebastian handed him a glass of Scotch.

Mycroft sat back against the sofa and tried to let the Scotch work. He forced himself to drink it faster than he would normally to try to mute the pain.

“I’d wondered where that painting went.”

“What?” Sebastian followed his gaze to the abstract art. “Oh… Jim… Jim bought it… or stole it… or something. He said it was a Tiger? Or maybe it was titled Tiger…”

Mycroft blinked at him. _That had… a personal connection_. He had a vague recollection of a tiger tattoo from the shower. “Your… nickname?”

“Jack Sebastian Moran: ‘Tiger’ Moran,” Sebastian said idly, and Mycroft drew in his breath in shock.


	8. Chapter 8

Mycroft’s head spun, and only partly from the coughing spell he’d just had. His internal files flashed up instantly: _John (Jack) Sebastian Moran: nephew to Lord Augustus Moran, top sniper in the British SAS before being recruited by MI6 for extremely covert work–lost on a mission and presumed dead._

“You… worked for Moriarty?” Mycroft could barely bring himself to say it. “You were one of our best…”

“Huh… I suppose… I suppose you would have known about me? Were you in your current position back then?”

“Not quite… I was one step down, but already shouldering most of the work… You…”

“Lost, presumed dead–not worth the expense to retrieve.” Sebastian stared off at the painting and drank more Scotch.

“Too risky, too expensive, and… it would have meant acknowledging we had any idea where you were and what you were doing.”

Sebastian shrugged. “Jim bought me.”

“Bought?”

“Bought? Traded? Got me as a bonus with whatever other dealings he was doing? I didn’t ask. He… he thought I was still worth something.”

Mycroft couldn’t think of a reply. _If Jim was responsible for getting him out, saving his life, well… that explained how he ended up here… and then last night… the man had clearly called me Jim when he woke up…_

Sebastian smiled faintly, watching the man think. “Yeah… you… Jim always said that there were only three other people in the world that could keep up with him, and he wasn’t sure about Sherlock some days.”

Mycroft nodded slowly.

“I don’t see any reason for being vague about this: I want some information, and I will do whatever it takes to get it; the problem is, I don’t even know if you have it.”

“I doubt….” He tried to steady his nerves and looked mournfully at the empty glass. “I doubt I will give it to you, my duty to–” He clutched the pillow over himself–his only covering.

“I want to know why you–and Jim–were both suicidal, both saying the same thing years apart, both even connected to the same damn bridge!”

“Oh! Oh… that’s…” He lowered his head. _Not intelligence work then, exactly._ “That’s different… I don’t know–I’m not sure.”

“Speculate,” Sebastian said flatly.

“Moriarty… I don’t think he cared if we interrogated him. He… laughed us off, mostly.” Mycroft sighed. “Then he… I was foolish–beyond foolish–and I took him to Sherringford.”

“And had him tortured again.”

“No!… no… could… I shouldn’t even tell you about Sherringford, it’s top secret, but you already know…” Mycroft sighed.  _And I don’t think I can hold out against another beating…_ “Can I have another scotch?”

Sebastian shrugged and poured a glass full. “I don’t give a shit about your political nonsense.”

“It’s part of our political nonsense, sadly.” He drank steadily, letting the burn distract him; Sebastian didn’t say anything.

“My sister, Euros, is a prisoner at Sherringford Prison.”

Whatever Sebastian had expected did not start with this. “What?”

“She… is brilliant–and quite insane. My Uncle Rudy had her imprisoned because she was too valuable to kill, and perhaps out of some misplaced affection–God knows I was a fool over that.”

Sebastian frowned. “So… where does Jim fall into this?”

“She asked for a meeting with him… as a Christmas present.”

Sebastian put his drink down. “Ooookay, I don’t get it?”

“She wanted a meeting with him–five minutes, unsupervised–separated by glass. She… she can twist people around, you see… talking to them. I never, ever, should have done it.” Mycroft laughed bleakly. “Fool that I am, I thought I was immune.”

Sebastian tumbled that around in his mind. _It… it didn’t quite make sense, but there was something…_ “I need you to back up and start over. This… sister? Can… twist people up by talking?”

“If there was ever someone in this world with an actual superpower–she has it.” Mycroft held on to the glass for support. “She’s… I don’t know if she’s actually smarter than I am, or just… She has no restraints. She… We had precautions in place, to keep her isolated–Uncle Rudy had some, but they were insufficient–I increased the restrictions.”

“What do you mean, she can twist people up?” Sebastian asked. Dogged determination and patience was a sniper’s hallmark, and Mycroft was answering–he just wasn’t doing it well.

“She talks… you think… you think it’s reasonable. Sometimes you don’t even realize she made the suggestion. More often, she finds ways to get people what they want: stock market tips, medical treatment, information… She had control of the whole prison, by the end, and I never knew.”

“And Jim?”

“She… wanted to meet him. He was her Christmas present. I took him to see her…” Mycroft looked up tiredly. “They must have met again, outside the prison… but… he recorded videos for her: when there were clues pointing to him, Sherlock believed he was alive… It was just Euros. She almost killed us all.”

Sebastian got up and went away with his scotch; he came back with juice and water and put it down on the table. “You can keep drinking, if it helps. I need to be somewhat sober to follow this.”

Mycroft tried to explain it: he tried to tell him about Euros as a child, the threats, the danger, the house; Uncle Rudy telling him and bringing him into it when he was just a young man; Sherlock somehow erasing the memory of his childhood friend and conflating it with the dog they’d had…

Once he started talking, he couldn’t stop.

Sebastian sat quietly and didn’t interrupt: he only made encouraging noises and poured him juice. Eventually, Sebastian took him back into the bathroom and got a washcloth for his face–that was when he realized he’d been crying.

“I’m ordering in food,” he said after re-securing him to the couch. “Please don’t make me kill the delivery kid?”

Mycroft didn’t think he would, but… he just nodded. He was so very tired: just talking about it was such a relief, but he felt exhausted.

Sebastian stepped aside and ordered, and then came back in and sat down with a pad of paper, a pen, and the phone he was using as a recorder.

“The phrase about pain and suffering: write it down,” he said, handing the pen and paper to Mycroft.

Mycroft was perplexed, but he did.

“Write down what you think about, about the bridge.”

After some time, Mycroft said, “Alright, done.”

“This… She can put thoughts into your head?”

“Up to a point. She can… encourage things that are already there; given enough time, she can change–”

Sebastian cut him off. “You aren’t immune.”

“No… I thought I was, for a time, but even I never dared spend too much time with her.”

Sebastian tapped the paper and played the clips of Jim again. _Word for word, allowing for a change of names._

“You… and Jim… said EXACTLY the same things, word for word,” Sebastian looked very levelly at Mycroft, “and that’s just the things I’ve heard you both SAY. Then there’s the fact that both of you tried suicide, and you chose the bridge Jim had been considering…”

Mycroft looked up from the paper slowly. “You think Euros…?”

“Jim went to hell after Sherringford. That’s the first time he ever said those things, or even paid much attention to that bridge. It would be damned odd to be a coincidence, don’t you think?”

“Yes…” His mouth was very dry: he gulped at the water. “But she… she collapsed into catatonia… We replaced all of her guards–everyone in the prison…”

“Catatonics don’t play violin, Mycroft. The fact that you think she is?”

“She hasn’t spoken since–”

“That you know of, that you remember…” Sebastian was feeling an icy certainty that this Euros was behind both of them. “But… nothing undid the damage she already did; you never spoke to anyone else, did you?”

“No…”

“And she IS interacting, playing with Sherlock…”

“Yes…”

“And you go, don’t you?”

“With my parents… They blame me…”

“Blame your Uncle Rudy, but you were a KID… and exposed to that bitch from square one, weren’t you?”

“I didn’t see her again in person until later… much later…”

“By which point, she had full control of the prison, I bet.” Sebastian got up and paced. “You said Rudy didn’t have good enough security?”

“No,” Mycroft shook his head. “We found compromised guards…”

“She probably got to the people putting the new security in… and you felt so much more secure after that… you stopped worrying.”

Mycroft saw it: _the increased security lending a sense of safety, people lowering their guards…_

“And after she almost killed you all–and got her hooks into Captain Watson but good–you BELIEVED that she was harmless…”

“Why?” Mycroft whispered, horrified. “Dear God, why? She… she should have been shot… I never should have let… Why would I think she was SAFE?!”

“Because she wanted you to,” Sebastian nodded slowly. _It made sense: it was bizarre, and improbable, but… it made sense._ “And then she wanted you out of the way.”

Mycroft collapsed.

His fault, all his fault, stupid, stupid… how could he have done it? He risked everyone… hurt everyone… _“You’re drowning in mistakes and failures…”_ drowning… He had to drown… it was the only solution… the only way out…

Pain suddenly lanced through him and he reeled backward.

_I’m… on the floor? Someone is holding me–pressure point… pain…_

“What? What happened?” Mycroft managed to croak.

“You curled up, muttered a lot about drowning and… guilt, I guess… and then tried to bolt with the chain still on your leg.” He looked back. “Dragged the sofa a bit–don’t think you did your leg any favors.” He sighed and got up. “Doorbell went off: I have to go get the food.”

Mycroft lay there trying to breathe… the pain in his ribs and other places being joined by a newer, more insistent, pain in his ankle.

Sebastian came back with bags and put them down in the kitchen, then went away and came back with the by-now familiar medical bag.

“You did a number on that ankle…” Sebastian said, calmly treating it and wrapping it. “Feel like telling me why?”

“I… I had to drown myself. I HAD to…” Mycroft murmured. “She said… ‘You are so used to causing problems, Mycroft, that you don’t even notice them anymore… You’re drowning in mistakes and failures…’ She said that…” He repeated it. _It felt… right… important…_

Pain brought him back to himself again.

“Interesting. When you go away voluntarily you don’t feel pain, but when you go–I don’t know what to call it–when you get hypnotized or whatever, you do,” Sebastian said thoughtfully, holding his fingers on a pressure point in Mycroft’s foot.

“Please don’t…” Mycroft heard himself begging Sebastian not to hurt him and shut his mouth, ashamed.

“I really don’t know what to do with you, honestly.” Sebastian sighed. “But for right now? Military protocols: never turn down a chance to eat–so we eat something.”

The food was excellent–but Mycroft could barely taste it.

_Euros… had almost killed him–might still–and she was still out there… playing with people…_


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trading places, past and present.

Sebastian watched Mycroft as he ate. He ate like Jim did when he was thinking hard: about half the time the hand just paused on the way to his mouth and hung there. Sebastian smiled wistfully and nudged his hand toward his mouth and he finished the motion.

Mycroft eventually realized that Sebastian was… _nudging my arm? To… keep eating?_ He blinked and looked down at his fork. “You… did that for him?”

“Yeah.” He had a bittersweet smile on his face. “He’d get into some problem and… I had to threaten to hand feed him baby food once.”

“I cannot imagine he took it well.”

“He didn’t,” Sebastian smirked, “but he finished his dinner.”

“It is evident that Euros… programmed me to drown,” Mycroft admitted. “Her repetition of the word…”

Sebastian nodded, “You said ‘drowning in mistakes’.”

Mycroft flinched.

“She mentioned the bridge?” Sebastian knew the answer had to be “yes”, but he figured it was better to be clear.

“Yes… the currents especially… and… I recall her saying it was like sinking a ship…”

Sebastian tilted his head. “The ship of state?”

 _I was such a fool_. “Likely.” He poked dubiously at the food.

“Eat it, it’s good for you,” Sebastian nodded at the container.

“Yes… I am… it’s… I never ate well when I was distressed.”

Sebastian ate quietly for a while. “Jim had never been suicidal before–never. Murderous? Sure. Crazy risk taking? Absolutely. But never suicidal.” He sat back and stared at the painting. “If he’d died because he’d miscalculated, or took a chance that failed? That would be… It would hurt, but it would be him…like me getting shot, or… or… but shooting himself? No.”

“You… thought I had hurt him… somehow?”

“I knew you had hurt him.” Sebastian remembered all too well. “When he got out of your cells the first… when he got back… he was injured, and sick… and then he was obsessed with you.”

“Me?!”

“Yeah. Before then it was ‘Sherlock this’ and ‘Sherlock that’. Afterwards? I was about to go shoot you to shut him up.” Sebastian threw back his tea and wished it was Scotch. “He was a crazy fucker on the best of days, but…”

“But you loved him.” Mycroft sighed. “That was obvious before last night–or this morning.”

Sebastian didn’t know how to react to that so he ignored him. “After… after whatever happened, he mentioned Sherringford; after that, he got… quieter, more… depressed. Started talking about how nothing was exciting anymore. The only thing that seemed to get his attention was taking Sherlock’s life apart… which was weird.”

“Why was it weird?” Mycroft sat back with his tea and tried to ignore the fact that his only clothing was a sofa pillow. “He’d been obsessed with Sherlock.”

“He wanted to collect Sherlock, before… Then, after the pool, he’d been thinking about how to break up those two–Watson, you know–said he’d need to get him away from Watson. He was mostly thinking… and you know, doing what he always did.” Sebastian shrugged. “Running five things at once, stuff like that. Then… you picked him up… the first time.”

Sebastian sighed, “He switched his obsession to you, more or less.”

“I repeat: me?”

“I could show you the notes… I suppose. He suddenly needed to know everything about you–said you were too buttoned up by half, and he wondered what you had going on underneath that…. Hell, I was starting to get jealous.”

“I can’t picture it.”

“Then you picked him up again–I guess that was the Christmas present thing–and he lost all interest in you and… was all… He was planning something. It seemed to have him busy and excited and I thought that was good… but… He kept going out to meet someone, without me–wouldn’t tell me who or where… And he kept getting worse… and then he was taking Sherlock’s life apart…”

Mycroft sat in silence for as long as he could stand, “And then he forced my brother to commit suicide or lose his friends, and he shot himself.”

Sebastian nodded.

After a very long time–only fifteen minutes, Mycroft’s time clock informed him, but it was an extremely uncomfortable fifteen minutes–Sebastian picked up talking again.

“Once I could bring myself to do it, I tried to go over his notes… and he’d erased almost all of them. Anything after… Sherringford, I guess… was gone, except for a few scribbles in margins of things. Even the business notes were gone, and he always left business notes–just in case.”

“She… likely didn’t want any clues…”

“This is your SISTER?!”

“Yes.”

“Are you SURE?!”

Mycroft couldn’t help but laugh, “Quite certain. None of the three of us were… normal.”

“Okay, you have that.” Sebastian sat back and looked him over. _The bruises were mostly at that awful stage; moving into the green where they were fading but looked worse. His one eye was bloodshot and puffed to the point that it must be hard to see–kind of looked like a special effect, really–and the beard growing out covered the jaw a lot… the bruises on his torso were spectacular–he probably had a cracked rib, judging from the way he clutched the pillow when he coughed._

“You look like shit.”

“That… is hardly my fault.”

“No, it’s mine. You took Jim away from me–you killed him–and I wanted you to suffer.”

“I was already suffering: admittedly, you added a physical component I could have done without.”

Sebastian shook his head slowly. “Except it wasn’t you, really, was it? It was her.”

“It is my responsibility, I failed–” Mycroft began, but Sebastian abruptly stood up.

“Shut. Up.” Sebastian put every ounce of command into it: Mycroft shut up.

“Legally–publicly–it may be your responsibility, but that bitch was allowed to live when you were barely fourteen, and you’ve been playing catchup ever since. She’s been playing you since before you were even out of school.”

“What?”

Sebastian started pacing again. Mycroft once again noted the similarities to a great cat, and could see how he’d gotten his nickname.

“She got to your Uncle Rudy… Probably pointed out that she was too useful to kill– although that might have been just normal stupidity; the government always wants the best and shiniest weapon and intelligence is just as bad–and then she started working on the jailers. You visited her, so she was working on you… played on your sympathy, played on your guilt…

“Then once you took over… Well, by that time she would be older–knew more, knew what she was doing–and she played you.”

“I… I want very much to deny that.” Mycroft paused. He did… he was angry? “I feel a great deal of anger about that, toward you… I…”

“Want to blow me off and ignore me because of COURSE she would reinforce the idea that you were immune. As long as you are certain you can’t be played?”

“…she… suggested… that I was immune.” Mycroft turned that over in his mind, carefully, “That my intellect would protect me.”

“Maybe it did–to a point.” Sebastian shrugged. “But you kept seeing her. She was playing you, and the guards, and all the intelligence you gave her or asked of her–and you said she was getting out, too?”

“Yes, by the end she could come and go as she…” Mycroft stopped. “I don’t know how long she was able to leave, do I?”

“No, you don’t… It could have been months before you think–or years.” Sebastian paused in his pacing. “After Jim met her in Sherringford, he kept going somewhere without me, and… I bet he was meeting her, and she… she’s why. She’s why he got that obsession with the bridge, and why he eventually shot himself. Her.”

“I cannot argue it,” Mycroft admitted quietly. “My own… As far as I know, I got the idea about the bridge from her mentioning it, but… it didn’t seem odd at the time.”

“You probably already had that older brother sense of responsibility: that’s normal, the parents insisting you have to be perfect and take care of the younger kids… and they get away with so much shit…”

Mycroft felt a wave of near-dizzying anger. “Nothing I did was ever good enough and any mistakes…”

Sebastian laughed bitterly, “You have the usual older brother problem, and a younger sibling who is an addict–and I’ve seen how often parents make all kinds of excuses and fall all over the troubled kid, while the other kid has to be perfect to even get by… I’m the eldest in my family, after all.” Sebastian spared a thought for his sister: _Thank God for Rebecca: she always supported me._

“Uncle Rudy always said I could do better… I wasn’t good enough–”

“The same Uncle Rudy who fucked this mess up from the get-go? He’s in a piss-poor position to be bitching about you.”

Mycroft looked up slowly. “He… he did, didn’t he? And he… I was never good enough… never…” Memories he’d buried and forced down for years overwhelmed him and he trailed off.

Sebastian paused and watched… Mycroft was shivering violently. He walked out of the room and back into his bedroom. _I have no idea how I am supposed to feel about this._ He looked at the Richard Brook headshot. “Figures you’d leave this for me to clean up.” He grabbed a set of sweats that didn’t have any drawstrings in them and went back.

Mycroft was remembering things and he couldn’t stop: _Uncle Rudy alternating praise and talking about how he was mature and he could handle it, and tearing him apart for being a weak emotional child._

_He’d thrown up watching an interrogation–not even a bad one–and Rudy hadn’t said a word to him until they were back in his office. “This is what governments DO, Mycroft. These people are threats to thousands of innocent people and we are their last line of defense–pull yourself together.”_

_“Do… Do I have to watch? It’s… he was…”_

_“I expected better of you, Mycroft: you’re being an overemotional child like your brother.” Rudy had narrowed his eyes. “Go down to medical: I want a blood test.”_

_Mycroft had been stunned. “I’m not using drugs!”_

_“Then you won’t have a problem with a blood test. Once you’re done, go back to school.”_

_“But we were going to see Euros…” He hadn’t seen her in months._

_“As emotional and weak as you are? She’d take you apart. Get out.”_

Something hit him softly. “What?” He blinked back to the present. _Some kind of grey fabric…_

“Pull on workout gear.” Sebastian sighed, “I still don’t know what to do with you, but there’s no reason for you to be sitting naked on the couch.” He came over and unlocked the cuff. “Where were you? In your head, I mean–you were shaking.”

“First time I witnessed an interrogation,” Mycroft admitted, “I threw up. Uncle Rudy dressed me down, made me get a blood test, and wouldn’t let me visit Euros because I was… emotional.”

“Jesus! How old were you?”

“Twenty-one… Sherlock had been caught with some drugs recently, so he thought…”

“No, he didn’t,” Sebastian snorted.

Mycroft finished putting on the clothes: he felt immensely better. “I beg your pardon?”

“Mycroft… you’re smart as hell, and you know all the tricks intelligence and interrogation and all that use, right?”

“Certainly.”

“I’m not in your league–God knows, I wasn’t in Jim’s–but I TOOK counter-interrogation and interrogation training.” Sebastian just shook his head. “You never looked back at your own history… not objectively.”

Mycroft wanted to yell at him but he was too tired. “No one can truly be objective about their own past, I have found, but I don’t know what you mean.”

“He ripped you down. No one but a sociopath sees their first interrogation without reacting–you reacted by throwing up. Okay… right now… put yourself back in the office: you’re interrogating someone and some promising young KID of twenty-one is witnessing his first… and he throws up. What do you do?”

“Have the psych team find out if he’ll be able to handle it.”

“Uh-huh… Promising analyst… do you rip him up for being emotional? Make him get a blood test? Is there any REASON to make him get a blood test?”

Mycroft tried to think and suddenly all the pieces fell into place… differently. “He knew I wasn’t using drugs… It’s a perfectly normal thing to be upset–undesirable, perhaps, but normal.”

“And?”

“He wanted to shame me, break me down–standard emotional manipulation… He set me up to witness my first interrogation right before I would have seen Euros… knowing I would react… so he could… punish me… make me feel inferior…”

“Guilty… a failure…” Sebastian nodded, watching Mycroft flinch. “Think: had he done that before? Set you up for failure and then made you feel badly about it?”

“Yes,” Mycroft whispered, “constantly… and then I was so relieved when anything went… right… My God, that’s classic conditioning for… he used that on me? How didn’t I see…?”

“Because you were a kid? Sounds like Uncle Rudy was probably a piece of work to begin with… Good question whether your sister worked on him or learned it from him.” Sebastian shrugged, “Could be both…”

“He… he was…” Mycroft trailed off. _He’d been my hero, he’d been the one doing what I wanted to do… and he’d been “letting me” do a lot of his analysis for the last few years before he retired… and I’d…_ “He’d had me doing a great deal of his work for him… by the end… as practice…”

“Sure.” Sebastian poured him some water. “You told me he kept Euros alive because she was brilliant and he used her to solve problems–so did you, right?”

“She often saw things that we… that I missed.”

“So he’s got two genius kids doing his work for him, and he’s playing you both off against each other. Pity he’s dead.” He shrugged and sat back slowly. “And then Euros is playing you… and Jim… and I didn’t know enough to save Jim, and I saved you by accident.”

“Yes…” Mycroft closed his eyes slowly–the pieces had shifted and fell together in patterns and he could see it all so clearly suddenly– and opened them. “I… want you to do something for me, but I think it will be something you want to do.”

“I can guess, but go on.” Sebastian saw the sudden clarity and cool deliberation in Mycroft’s eyes–it was both foreign and familiar in a way that made his heart ache.

“With me out of the way, and Sherlock–and my parents–visiting her… they are in immediate danger. I spared Euros for years because she was my sister–and, admittedly, because she was valuable to England–but it is evident now that she cannot be trusted or contained. If I assist you to get past the security, will you kill her?”

“I wanted revenge for Jim… sounds like that would be it, doesn’t it?” Sebastian looked him over a bit sadly. “We’ll call that even for you working Jim over and taking him out there, alright?”

“Given that you saved my life, and helped me to see the truth? I think more than even–although I would have preferred something less painful.”

“In that case, Mycroft,” Sebastian leaned forward and held out a hand, still scabbed and marked from beating him; Mycroft held out his hand without hesitation. “We have a deal. Now we just need to plan.”


End file.
